Society
The point of low-powered committees is to make sure that no hard and fast rules are ever made
Published 17 April 2000
Mike Nesbitt rings to ask if I'd like to join a new committee that will shortly begin a two-year investigation into the impact of online learning on higher education. My duties wouldn't take up more than two days a month, and there'd be a token honorarium of £60 for each meeting. It was, he said breathlessly, very exciting. Several significant figures from education and information technology had already been recruited, and there was every indication that the committee would become "a high-powered body" and play a major part in influencing government policy.
I found the invitation moderately interesting. Of course, I knew nothing whatsoever about how online learning might affect higher education, but there was the pleasantly malicious prospect of eventually producing a report showing that most of my former university colleagues would shortly be replaced by thousands of domestic PCs. There was also the £60 a day.
But then came the chilling phrase that eventually prompted me to tell Mike that the present near-death condition of several members of my family meant that I was not accepting any new engagements for the foreseeable future. What so concerned me was the news that the committee would be "high-powered".
It's not that I'm unused to high-powered committees. During my life as an academic, I variously served on such bodies as the Technical Staff Subcommittee, which made decisions about the appropriate grade for laboratory glass-blowers, and on the Ethics Committee, which considered such matters as whether or not the acceptance of a large research grant from British American Tobacco for an investigation into the psychological benefits of chain-smoking was in any way in conflict with core academic values. There was also my high-powered year on the Promotions Committee, trying to decide how best to appoint two senior lecturers from the customary 750 applicants.
But my inability to grasp fine points of detail allied to an extraordinary capacity for losing the minutes of the last meeting and an occasional failure to recognise the specific committee I was attending (all of which led in one unfortunate instance to a glass-blower being awarded a readership in politics) meant that I eventually confined myself to more lightweight committees. I remember with particular pleasure my languid days drinking tea and eating biscuits on Estates and Gardens (how to stop students trampling on the tulips), University Bookshop (how to persuade academics to send in their booklists on time) and Town and Gown (how to keep outsiders off university property).
The essential point of these low-powered committees was to make sure that no hard and fast decisions were ever made. Any new proposal could always be ruled out of order on the grounds that it might establish a precedent, and carefully assembled evidence could always be dismissed if it contradicted the personal impressions of an individual committee member.
It's difficult to convey the sense of camaraderie and general pointlessness that was induced by such meetings, but I still remember with particular pleasure a motion from the professor of philosophy which argued at length that Any Other Business was unfairly placed at the end of each agenda and thereby received somewhat cursory treatment. Might it not be more appropriate to have AOB immediately after Apologies for Absence? After a delightfully incoherent discussion lasting several hours, it was agreed that AOB should be thus promoted on condition that any semantic confusion be avoided by renaming it Any Business. They don't make committees like that any more.
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